Storing and safeguarding electronic data is of paramount importance in modern business. Accordingly, various systems may be employed to protect such electronic data.
For example, storage networks may be employed that contain multiple storage devices. Storage networks may provide some level of redundancy by use of mirrored or redundant components (e.g., disk drives, disk controllers, power supplies and/or fans), each of which may be hot-swappable to avoid downtime. Storage networks may include a volatile, solid-state, cache memory system to enhance the performance of the storage network.
The use of solid-state disk drives in such storage networks is increasing in popularity. A solid state disk drive is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. A solid-state disk drive may emulate (and therefore replace) a conventional hard disk drive. With no moving parts, a solid-state disk drive largely eliminates (or greatly reduces) seek time, latency and other electromechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive.
Unfortunately, the above-described volatile, solid-state, cache memory system included within the storage network may fail, resulting in a substantial decrease in performance of the storage network.